


tell me, honestly

by sextile



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: (kinda), Artist AU, Homophobia, Internalised Homophobia, M/M, Sharing a Bed, Soulmate AU, atsumu is super gay, how many tropes can i fit into one fic lets find out!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-17 18:35:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29721492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sextile/pseuds/sextile
Summary: Soulmates are not our ‘other halves’, but an extension of our hands, our hearts that beat in our chests.Atsumu learns that boys are maybe just a teensy bit pretty.
Relationships: Miya Atsumu/Sakusa Kiyoomi
Comments: 6
Kudos: 108
Collections: Haikyuu Big Bang 2020





	tell me, honestly

**Author's Note:**

> WHEEEE we got [ART](https://twitter.com/appllelle/status/1365469960202461185) !!! tysm anqi <33333

Miya Atsumu was a hopeless romantic.

On his 12th birthday, he woke up at five am to watch the soft pinks of the sky warp and fade into vast blue, only interrupted by the sharp outline of skyscrapers. He felt invincible then, a boy who built a kingdom in his bed, the railing of the top bunk keeping him stable as he leaned over to peer at the sky outside. 

_ Soulmates, _ his mother had said the night before,  _ are reflections of ourselves. Soulmates are not our ‘other halves’, but an extension of our hands, our hearts that beat in our chests. They’re another set of eyes we can look at the world with, another set of eyes that can see how truly beautiful you are.  _

He was sure his mother had added on that last sentence because she overheard him complaining about his height, but with his eyes set on the movement of the clouds, he decided that his soulmate was possibly the best person in the universe. If she was an extension of him, all rough grins and sly quips, then didn’t it make sense that she was just as perfect as him?

He rubbed his thumb across the back of his hand, anxiously anticipating the day he turned thirteen. Waiting for when his skin would transform into a canvas he could spill his heart onto. Waiting for when he will be coloured in the love of his soulmate, twin sharpie hearts drawn inside their wrists, acrylic finger paintings of the sunset, and hastily scrawled reminders to do homework due the next day. 

Gripping the railing, he leaned further out of his bed and cracked open the window. He felt the sharp morning breeze cup his face and twist its fingers into his brown hair. School was a foreign thing, still four hours away. He held all the time in his small hands, the power to paint his journey along the trails of clouds, rolling with gentle recklessness down mountainsides. 

“Ya better be one good soulmate,” he said to the skies, poking at the window screen in a warning.

He heard a grumble below him, and the bed shook, its metal creaking. “Shut the hell up, ‘Tsumu. Talkin’ to yerself is weird.”

Atsumu shook his bunkbed in retaliation and pushed the window open further. Silently, he urged the wind to blow inside their room and freeze Osamu. “Yer weird!” he yelled back. 

And it was evidently too loud because their father sent out a cautionary,  _ “Boys”, _ from the room across the hall. 

The warning unheeded, Atsumu still had four hours to burn and the entire world was at his fingertips. “Wanna play volleyball, ‘Samu?” he asked, looking down at the bottom bunk, searching for a face among pillows and thick blankets.

“No! It’s too cold!” Osamu replied, sticking up his middle finger. “And shut the window or I’m cutting off the bristles of yer toothbrush.” 

Atsumu huffed. “I’m gonna paint over yer bed sheets then, and tell ‘ma ya threatened me.”

He heard a grunt, then “Fine.”

The skies turned pink, to blue, to black, and it was at fourteen when he found out it was wrong to like boys. 

Atsumu liked girls well enough, and girls seemed to like him back, but he never really could place the feeling of his stomach twisting when  _ Aran-kun _ smiled at him. Not until Osamu received a letter from a boy saying, ‘ _ I get butterflies in my stomach when I see you’. _ It was love, Atsumu realised then, when Osamu read it out loud. It was love, the way his brain sloughed off his skull when Aran spoke to him in that calm, easy tone. Love, he thought, was good, and Osamu, he thought, would appreciate the confession, at least a little. 

But Osamu turned the boy down, scoffing at the letter and shoving it back into his hands. “Boys who like boys are weird,” he said, eyes trained on the ground.

That day, Atsumu was silent on the way home, nails digging into the straps of his bag. Osamu kicked the back of his calf and demanded he fess up. “Who do I need’ta kill?”

Grumbling, Atsumu kicked him back half-heartedly. “No one, just myself again.” It was always himself, making mistakes he didn’t even know were mistakes. Making the mistake of having feelings for a boy as if he were a girl. 

They walked in silence, and Atsumu knew his brother was trying to figure out what was wrong with him. He kicked a rock with the toe of his shoe and watched it skip along the path in front of them. The sky was gold, washing everything it touched in a melancholy orange. The sparse clouds stood still overhead.

He grabbed a pen from the outside pocket of his bag, and outside of Osamu’s peripheral, he scrawled on his arm,  _ are you a boy? _ His stomach twisted, but not in the way it did when Aran scrunched up his nose at a rude comment Atsumu made. It was a rope wound tight and coiled dangerously around the  _ butterflies _ in his stomach, threatening to tear off their wings.

The moment they arrived home, his skin tingled– something he hadn’t felt since a month after he turned thirteen. A small  _ yes _ appeared under his question and the world fell out from under him. He shucked off his shoes, throwing his bag at the wall before running to the bathroom and scrubbing at the pen.

Usually it was his soulmate who angrily washed away paint marks and prying questions (but seemingly never the homework reminders). And usually, it was Atsumu who was disappointed at seeing the words fade, but as he rubbed off the ink, he just felt a wave of  _ confusion _ through the other end of their stupid bond, emotions apparently another extension to the shared words and doodles on their skin.

He wanted his soulmate to be  _ romantic. _

Atsumu crawled into bed and pulled the covers over his head, hands holding them in place under his chin. The sky was dark and he wished to sink into it. Distant lights of other households flicked off, and it wasn’t late enough for the moon to be in the view of his window. Boys couldn’t like boys and Aran wasn’t someone he could kiss, someone he could hold hands with, or look at for too long. Aran was beautiful but he wasn’t someone Atsumu could love.

* * *

Miya Atsumu was an artist.

No one really knew that about him, rather being known as  _ Inarizaki’s hot setter _ and all. He was seventeen, bleach blond, and a notorious heartbreaker (apparently). He received at least one confession every month from girls who thought they knew him, and even more of those soft little looks that crossed people’s faces when they were in love.

And Atsumu was terribly, achingly, in love. 

He had a sketchbook, for his eyes only, where half the pages were of two-toned hair and stern gazes. Of  _ Kita-san _ , who he never tried to look at for too long, but always ended up sneaking glances of in the locker rooms, in hallways when they passed each other, at the front gate as they left school.

He drew hands, outstretched to the sky, to the lights of dying stars that giggled at how his heart bled over pages already stained with graphite smears. The pages that weren’t filled with Kita, were of Aran’s expressions, three years younger but still just as beautiful. Every stroke of Atsumu’s pencil confessed his silly crushes to flimsy pages, swearing them to secrecy, because boys who liked boys were weird. And when Aran was walking home with him and said,  _ I’m goin’ on a date with Kita. He’s my soulmate _ , Atsumu couldn’t help but pause, and blurt out, “That’s pretty fuckin’ weird.”

Something flickered across Aran’s face then. Something that made Atsumu’s stomach lurch, the feeling of knowing he made a mistake. Aran stopped and turned to him, giving him a soft, easy smile as he shook his head. “Why do you think that?” he asked, voice still, infuriatingly, calm. The same tone that made Atsumu fall for him in the first place.

He looked away. Osamu was home sick, and he had thrown him under the bus countless other times, so what was once more? 

“‘Cuz ‘Samu. Kinda,” Atsumu replied. He swallowed hard and blinked away the sudden tears that welled up in his eyes. He balled his fists by his sides and dug his nails into his palms. Boys who liked boys were weird, and he wasn’t right for liking Aran-kun three years ago, and he wasn’t right for liking Kita-san now. 

Aran took one look at him and sighed, holding out his arms. “C’mere,” he murmured, pulling Atsumu into a tight hug.

For a brief second, Atsumu froze.

Then his stiff body gave in to Aran’s hands gently rubbing his back, and he allowed the rope around his butterflies to unravel. He melted into the familiar warmth of Aran’s body and let himself sob into his shoulder, his own hands grasping the back of his shirt. “I’m fuckin’ sorry,” Atsumu said between broken sobs and shaky breaths. “I shouldn’t’ve said that. I’m– I’m fuckin’ awful, Aran-kun.”

His mind was hazy and everything was slipping. The world outside of Aran’s arms was blurred with tears, and the cars passing by were nothing but splotchy paint stains in the background. Lights from street lamps seeped through his wet lashes and the artificial warmth they offered was meager in comparison to Aran’s soft words. 

“It’s alright,” he said, voice a deep, soothing rumble in his chest. “It’s not your fault. It’s not Osamu’s either. It’s just what y’all have been told.”

Aran was always the most mature of the three, the most responsible. He always held the answers in his hands and as Atsumu pulled back, he mumbled another apology. “I can see why the gods slapped the two of ya’s together.”

“And why’s that?”

“The both of you are beautiful.”

The sky was pink and purple and blue, the waning, sanguine colours succumbing to a deep blue, as more lamps and house lights flickered on. The air was cool, and Atsumu could breathe.

It was the same sky that greeted him at the airport three hours away from home, like inks spilling onto a wet canvas. He was almost nineteen years old with a scholarship to a prestigious art school. 

When he opened the door to his dorm, he found that his roommate’s bags were already there, but he still reveled in its spaciousness, something he rarely felt with Osamu around. It had large windows and enough floor space to spread out all his materials and then some. But when his roommate walked in–  _ Sakusa Kiyoomi– _ the walls pulled inwards as if he had his own field of gravity. Sakusa took up too much space in their dorm and although Atsumu was raised on manners and a nice enough attitude to get by, Sakusa was a nail in his side.

(He rejected Atsumu’s handshake with a grimace and the he had never been more offended.)

Despite Sakusa’s clear desire to turn around and request a different roommate, they managed to settle down well. Invisible boundaries were drawn up and despite his mother’s chiding voice in his head, Atsumu pushed against them as much as he could get away with.

“So, Miya, why did you come here?” was the first question Sakusa asked. He had set the take-out on the counter of the kitchenette, having bought them dinner, claiming that the food in the dining hall looked borderline rancid. 

Atsumu raised an eyebrow as he washed his hands under Sakusa’s pointed look, grabbing a pair of chopsticks and his share of the food. “Are ya tryin’ ‘ta bully me outta the dorm? It’s not gonna work, Omi-kun.”

Sharpening his glare, Sakusa stabbed at his food. “Why art school? I saw that picture you hung up of your volleyball team– why pursue art instead?”

They were standing five feet apart, on opposite ends of the counter. Boxes were shoved into their respective corners, waiting to be opened, and Sakusa wouldn’t let them sit on the chairs until he had cleaned them. 

Atsumu hummed as he chewed, ass half on the counter, legs stretched out and ankles crossed. “I wanna make more art and get better at it. And besides, my soulmate’s been depriving me of it,” he joked, gesturing to his skin. “Always washes off whatever I try to draw.”

“Maybe your art is bad,” Sakusa suggested with a shrug of his shoulders.

Atsumu almost threw his chopsticks. “Hey! Watch yer mouth. I’ve got a scholarship here,” he said with a huff.

Sakusa cocked his head to the side, assessing the man in front of him. Atsumu felt cold eyes take in his face, his hands. He looked almost like a painting himself, with the setting sun in the windows behind him casting a glow over his dark curls. If he had seen a picture of Sakusa before they actually met, his heart would have stumbled, just a little.

“Why’re you here?” he shot back, taking another bite of the food that was quickly cooling in his hands.

“I like art, I wanted to spite my parents, and I’ve got the money to do it.”

Atsumu laughed. “I’m roomin’ with a stuck-up rich kid?”

With the audacity to look affronted, Sakusa scrunched his nose in disgust as he swallowed before speaking. “I’m neither of those things.”

“Please, Omi-kun,” Atsumu started, rolling his eyes, exasperated. “I probably would’ve pursued volleyball if it weren’t for the scholarship. Normal people struggle with school fees y’know.”

“Well…I’m glad you received the scholarship then.”

Something in his tone made Atsumu’s stomach flip. “Are ya sayin’ yer proud of me, Omi-Omi?” he asked with a grin, leaning forward. “Are we gonna be best roomies forever?” 

Sakusa’s face twisted in disdain and dropped his empty container into the bin under the sink. “I’m not, and no, we’re not. I’m just glad for your sake.” He washed his chopsticks and placed them on their small dish rack, drying his hands on a hand towel he hung up. 

Jabbing his chopsticks into the air in front of Sakusa, Atsumu’s grin widened. “So ya care about me!?” 

“No. You’re giving me a headache.” 

Atsumu smiled at his food at that, a thick comforting feeling settling into his gut. It was how Osamu responded to him when he was fed up with stolen food, and it was another old thing in a new place.

He finished up his food and cleaned up their small kitchen space, knowing that Sakusa probably would have throttled him if he didn’t, despite only meeting him that day.

Once completed, he ambled into their bedroom and found Sakusa deep cleaning the connected bathroom. Donning a face mask and gloved up to his elbows, his hair tied in a neat bun at the nape of his neck. They met eyes in the mirror and on instinct, Atsumu winked, earning himself another grimace, Sakusa’s eyebrows pinching at the bridge of his nose. 

Chuckling to himself, Atsumu turned to his luggage, deciding to sort as much as he could before bed. But after ten minutes, decor and clothes were strewn about, every inch of Atsumu’s own side an inch deep in his belongings. 

“What. The fuck. Miya,” came Sakusa’s voice from the bathroom doorway. Stray curls had come loose and fell in front of his face, mask pulled under his chin. “Are you aware that we have to live together for the next year?”

“Yeah, yeah, Omi-Omi,” Atsumu replied with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Was just waitin’ for ya to get out so I could brush my teeth.”

Sakusa sighed and took his gloves off, storing them under the sink. “All yours,” he said, gesturing to the bathroom that reeked of bleach.

Later, buried under a thick blanket and stray clothes he wasn’t bothered to put away, Atsumu’s eyes drifted to their window. Instead of distant mountains behind stiff buildings and neighborhoods, he could see the city, with countless lit windows that drowned out the stars. 

He rolled over to one side of the bed, reaching down to the floor and groping around for a pen he was sure he left down there. He found it and brought his hand up to the moonlight, drawing a small heart on his palm. It wasn’t something he dared to do until recently, and he was expecting it to disappear within minutes, but it was still there when he woke up. 

His eyes peeled open to Sakusa, leaning over him with a frown. “About time,” he grumbled, walking out of the room. 

“The fuck?” Atsumu’s voice was heavy with sleep and he blinked groggily, rubbing his eyes at the light that filled the room through the open window. The heart he drew was still on his palm and he almost started crying right then. 

“Were ya watchin’ me sleep?” he asked, rubbing his eye again, hoping it looked like he was erasing the bleariness from his eyes. “That’s creepy, Omi.”

Sakusa walked back over to his side of the room. “No it isn’t,” he replied. “Your five alarms rang and you didn’t wake up. Orientation starts in ten minutes and regardless of your specification, you need to go.” 

Ten minutes.

Atsumu stumbled out of bed and yanked off his shirt, telling himself he could shower in three minutes like normal people. “Yer a lifesaver Omi,” he yelled, shutting himself in the bathroom. And in his rush to wake himself up, Atsumu didn’t notice Sakusa blinking at his discarded shirt, faded pink tinting his cheeks.

At the end of the day, Atsumu went back to his dorm, buzzing with excitement. The first assignment of the month was to make art of something you loved, the prompt meant to be an icebreaker for their class. He loved a lot of things almost too much. With too much devotion, too much passion, too much attachment to the  _ thing, _ the  _ person. _ But when opening the door, his excitement was replaced by concern as he was met with a stormy-faced Sakusa. He was sitting at his desk, back rigid, and a pencil hovering over his sketchbook. 

Shutting the door behind him, Atsumu toed off his shoes and made his way to the front of Sakusa’s desk, leaning down to see the blank page. “Ayo, Omi-kun, ya good?”

“No.” Came the instant reply.

“Wanna talk about it?” Atsumu asked, walking over to his own desk and dumping out the contents of his own bag. “I know I never shut up but I swear I’m a good listener too. My twin brother always comes to me when he has a problem. Being born five minutes earlier gives you a lot more time to wisen up, and his advice was always shitty anyway.” He turned to look at Sakusa to see if he was listening, and almost took a step back at the piercing gaze sent his way. 

“Will you be my model?”

The words took a second to register in Atsumu’s head, and he felt his cheeks heat up. “ _ That’s _ why ya look like you could kill someone?”

Sakusa sighed. “No. Someone in my class spilled coffee on my white shirt. I’m asking you to be my model for my assignment.” 

Model for his assignment.

Something you loved.

The realisation hit Atsumu and he shrieked. “Ya have a crush on me!?” His cheeks flamed an embarrassing shade of red, but he hadn’t had a guy confess to him in almost a year. And never a guy who confessed in such a roundabout way.

“What the fuck?” Sakusa recoiled, confusion warping his features, face catching fire in a similar manner. “Where did you get that from?”

Atsumu raised his voice, crossing his arms with a frown. “The prompt for the assignment is somethin’ ya love! Whaddya mean ‘where did ya get that from’?” 

“Miya,” he said with a sigh. His whole body visibly relaxed. “We take different classes. We have different assignments.” 

Sakusa’s words were simple but they grabbed a hold of Atsumu and shook him violently. Of course, they had different assignments. Of  _ course. _ The feeling of immense embarrassment crept its way up into Atsumu’s brain and took permanent residence for the foreseeable future. He never knew how much his giant ego could fuck him over.

“Yeah,” he started. He coughed into his elbow as if he could expel the embarrassment from his body. “Yeah, duh. I knew that. Just fuckin’ with ya, Omi. But yeah, fer sure. I’ll be yer model. Got scouted a couple of times before I came here, but I turned them down ‘cuz could ‘ya imagine how many people you’d be influencin’? I’m too young ‘n I’ve got not enough advice to share with those who’d look up’ta me. I know they’ve got all those free merchandise things but y’know, the ones that found me had some pretty shit produ––” 

“Shut up.”

Atsumu complied and shut his mouth. He was clammy from head to toe and  _ holy shit, _ it felt like his ass was sweating too. 

Sakusa looked at him carefully. “Relax,” he said. “I know straight men get uncomfortable when they imply anything intimate with a guy. You don’t have to model for me if you really don’t want to, I just prefer real references to images.” 

Atsumu shook his head. “I’m down to model and… I’m not…” he hesitated. “I’m actually bisexual.” 

A look of surprise crossed Sakusa’s face, eyebrows raising slightly. “Oh, thanks. Good...good to know?”

“Why?” Atsumu asked, an instant smirk spreading over his features. “Got some friends that are  _ dyin’  _ ‘ta see your hot roommate?” 

Sakusa’s following expression of disgust sent Atsumu into hysterics, and his brain was malfunctioning just enough for him to wonder if he could paint that for his assignment. 

  
  


* * *

Miya Atsumu was an asshole. 

But evidently, a very, very hot one, with the way Sakusa  _ stared _ at him. 

Sakusa stared at Atsumu like he was tracking a fly moving around a room, the intense concentration drawing wrinkles across his face. In the firm set of his mouth, lips pressed together. It was the artist that looked at the model, but it was the model who was privy to how the artist painted. And Sakusa, though forged of all rigid focus and stiff posture, seemed at ease, captivating eyes flicking from canvas to Atsumu. Atsumu’s arms and stomach and thighs. 

Atsumu would be lying if he said he didn’t feel naked. 

He was wearing sweatpants slung low on his waist, revealing much more of his torso than what was necessary for Sakusa’s assignment. ( _ But why not go all out? _ Atsumu had thought to himself). 

He watched Sakusa hold his paintbrush as if it were shaped for his fingers. His hair was tied back again, with rogue strands slipping out as the minutes ticked by, and Atsumu completely forgot the ache from sitting still for so long when watching Sakusa paint was distractingly entertaining, oddly enough. 

“Hey, what gotcha interested in art?” 

Sakusa glanced back up to him, and something in his eyes made Atsumu’s stomach flip.

“There were paintings on the walls of the house I grew up in,” Sakusa started. “When I was lonely, I’d sit on the floor and just look at them. I want to make others feel less lonely.” His eyes flicked back up to Atsumu’s face. “What about you?”

Atsumu felt a small twist in his chest and he turned away. “Well. I uh— I got a crush on a boy and I guess I didn’t know what to do.” 

His gaze drifted back to Sakusa after he felt his blush had gone down, and if looks could kill, Sakusa’s smile would’ve murdered Atsumu on the spot. It was just a small quirk of the corner of his mouth and nothing more, a  _ nothing more _ that left Atsumu’s faithless heart pounding. A nothing more, that made him forget how to breathe, how to look his way without dripping to the floor as if his lips were summer.

  
“That’s cute,” Sakusa replied.

His smile disappeared but Atsumu’s brain had already burned it into his memory, mentally tracing the line of his lips, the crinkle in the corners of his eyes. He swallowed dryly and nodded. Sakusa Kiyoomi was a dangerous thing, and if Atsumu didn’t catch himself, he knew he would end up falling. 

He kept his eyes trained on the back of the easel as he filed the feeling away, opting to busy himself with counting every scratch and stray pencil mark on the thing until Sakusa set his brush down and said it was time for dinner–– and that Atsumu couldn’t look at the painting just yet. 

Atsumu had pouted but pulled on his shirt, offering to call the restaurant Sakusa liked. 

Long after dinner, Atsumu heard the muted noises of Sakusa painting in the small living area, his paintbrush clinking against the edge of a glass jar, water sloshing gently. The lamp light on his bedside was dimmed and he half wondered if he should stay up to make sure Sakusa was okay...or something. But idle thoughts turned into pools of dreams and he drifted into sleep that floated on the thin line dividing reality and subconscious. 

Yet when he was just about to sink, a heavy weight crashed onto his body, disrupting his vanilla flavoured dreams that were just within reach. 

“Omi?” Atsumu hissed, violently jolting awake. 

There was no response except for a muffled  _ s’mu _ that came from Sakusa’s mouth pressed against the covers.

His head lay on the space next to his chest, but his entire body was at a diagonal, on top of Atsumu’s, effectively pinning him down. 

Atsumu groaned softly.

“Yer in the wrong bed, Omi-kun,” he said gently, hoping that the words would register and the oncoming situation would be averted. 

But the man didn’t reply. His quiet breaths and the small curl of fingers against the bedspread said that he was very, very asleep. 

Atsumu exhaled slowly and looked up at the ceiling, arms folded behind his head. He closed his eyes and tried not to think of every area Sakusa was pressed up against. Only the thick blanket between them kept him sane.. 

But it seemed so thin now.

Under the dim light of his lamp, he observed the faint flutter of Sakusa’s lashes and the slight part of his lips. A small crease formed between his brows and Atsumu lifted a hand, intending to smooth it out before pausing, finger hovering above his forehead.

Sakusa never let Atsumu touch him when he was awake.

“Relax yer goddamn brows before I hafta touch yer face,” he said under his breath.

Despite his weak demand, the crease stayed and Sakusa mumbled, burying his nose further into the covers.

“You’re gonna get cold, but I can only move so much with y–” Atsumu broke off with a yawn. He rubbed his eyes and watched the slow movements of Sakusa’s body, softer than the inflexible mold he kept himself in during waking hours. It felt like cheating somehow– that he was able to see Sakusa vulnerable without him being fully aware of it.

“Ya shouldn’t be frownin’ while ya sleep, y’know? Yer gonna get wrinkles an’ that’s unflatterin’,” he murmured, continuing his sleepy, one-sided conversation.

After a long moment of hesitation, he carefully pressed the pad of his thumb to the middle of Sakusa’s brows, trying to ease the tension. 

A sound slipped past Sakusa’s mouth. Something that sounded oddly content.

Atsumu paused and let his hand tentatively slide up into Sakusa’s hair, brushing it back and out of his face. The action was like the smooth fold of clay under his fingers, although much more pliant. He smelled the faint scent of citrus and Atsumu idly wondered if Sakusa was as strict with his hair as he was with his workspace. Absentmindedly, he wound a loose curl around his finger, feeling the need for sleep grasp at the edges of his eyelids. 

“You’re kinda pretty when yer not yellin’ at me,” he said, voice barely above a whisper. His hand still slowly combed through dark curls as a long yawn spilled past his lips. 

He pulled his hand from Sakusa’s hair, resolving to leave the trivial questions for morning, just as he caught sight of sharp reds and dreamy yellows, accompanied by flecks of white on his own hand. He turned it slightly and peered at what appeared to be paint on his fingers and palm, though he had no recollection of even picking up a paintbrush the past few hours.

With the evidence presented, his little heart leapt to the conclusion that it was his soulmate. It was rare that his skin was stained with ink and colour that wasn’t from his own practice. 

Part of his sleep-riddled brain wondered if Sakusa ever talked to his soulmate. He never saw doodles or words on his skin. 

Maybe...maybe Sakusa already found his soulmate. That thought made Atsumu’s gut twist, and he wasn’t sure why. Maybe he despised the idea that Sakusa found true love before him. 

With effort, he reached over to his bedside to grab a blue pen. Scrawling on his palm, he said,  _ what are you painting? id love to see it sometime <3 _

He smiled softly at his own message and let sleep tug him into dreams, hoping he’d find an answer in the morning. 

And it was  _ love _ that was waiting for him. His own word that was circled with a black pen, ink faint as if hesitant. He switched off his alarm and stared at it, only just realising that Sakusa wasn’t on him anymore. For a brief second, Atsumu found that he missed the weight on top of him, a warmth that wasn’t provided by the covers. 

The front door swung open, and from the open door, Atsumu met eyes with Sakusa, whose tiny smile dropped into a frown. 

“You’re finally awake,” Sakusa said, shutting the door. “I tried waking you up but you slept through almost everything. Missed crit.” 

Atsumu groaned and tumbled out of his bed, dropping to the floor with a sigh. “Fuck…but I never really like crit anyway. The others don’t see my vision,” he replied to the ceiling, arms spread out on the wood. He heard Sakusa’s footsteps louder through the floor, echoes growing louder until Sakusa was looking down at him. 

“Are you always so melodramatic? Get off the floor.”

With a whine, Atsumu protested, “but Omiii, haven’t ya heard that lying on the floor solves like, half of yer problems?” 

His response was met with a light scoff and a shake of his head. “That’s not true,” Sakusa said, but the toe of his house slipper nudged Atsumu’s head to the side. “Make space for me.”

Atsumu shuffled over and turned to watch as Sakusa mirrored his position. He stretched his arms out and turned to look at Atsumu. “You’re lucky I cleaned the floor before you got here,” he murmured. “Killed a couple cockroaches before you showed up.” 

“Blegh, thank god yer a cleanin’ expert then, Omi-kun, ain’t that right?” he asked, grinning. 

“I don’t want to get a fatal disease at nineteen and die before I get anything done.”

Raising an eyebrow, Atsumu asked, “Like what? Meet yer soulmate? That’s pretty important on my own list of shit to do before I get a fatal disease and die.”

Their eyes locked and Atsumu swore neither of them blinked for a minute. 

“Yeah, something like that,” Sakusa replied. He had shifted his gaze back to the ceiling, breaking their small field of gravity–– maybe something Atsumu made up himself. Upside down and from the side, Sakusa was still, infuriatingly attractive. Two moles sat atop perfectly shaped eyebrows, something he shouldn’t even be  _ allowed _ to have, and there was something hypnotic in the way his tongue poked out to wet his lips that parted slowly. Not that Atsumu was looking at his lips. 

“Have ya met your soulmate yet?” Atsumu asked quietly. 

Sakusa shook his head, eyes still tracing the cracks in the ceiling. “You?”

“You forget they barely even talk to me.”

“Well, for what it’s worth, I hope you meet your soulmate before you die of a cockroach disease.”

“I’m not gonna die anytime soon when I have you to clean for me,” Atsumu teased, but his little jab backfired on him when Sakusa looked at him with furrowed brows, small pout on his lips. Atsumu’s stomach lurched, not unpleasantly, but it wrung tightly just the same. 

“I do more than clean, you know.”

Atsumu scrambled up into a sitting position and rested his hands on the floor, leaning forward slightly. “I’d know that if you ever told me anything about yourself.” He looked down at Sakusa, and he couldn’t help but realise how wide, how soft his eyes were. Twin reservoirs of sincerity. Atsumu didn’t notice himself drawing closer as he waggled his eyebrows. “Who are ya, Sakusa Kiyoomi?” 

The question was met with a hard hand to his face, three fingers on his hairline, pinkie and thumb on his cheekbones. It pushed him away with a grumble, and the action was expected, but Atsumu still yelped. “Ack! Omi, please!” Laughter bubbled around the edges of his voice, hearing Sakusa’s half hearted rebuttal as he pulled at his wrist to yank his hand away from his face. 

Then time stopped. Or maybe it sped up, Atsumu couldn’t tell. Atsumu couldn’t tell because his gaze fell on the blue writing on Sakusa’s hand, writing that looked suspiciously like his. Writing,  _ his _ writing, on the hand of a boy, the boy who was in front of him, and was looking at him, wondering why he hadn’t let go of his wrist. 

So Atsumu let it go with a sharp laugh as he stood. “Well, Omi-Omi, good talk, nice chattin’ with ya, but I’m gonna grab some breakfast, made some plans with a friend––a girl. Can’t keep girls waitin’, ya know what they’re like.” 

From the floor, Sakusa blinked at him, but Atsumu didn’t dare wait a second longer. He felt the backs of his eyes prickle with what he knew were tears, and grabbed a jacket from the end of his bed, shoving it onto his arms. 

“Oh but I brought you breakfast… dining hall had fatty tuna and I remember you saying it was your favourite.” 

“I’ll have it for lunch!” he replied. His voice was tight and he stepped into his shoes at the front door. “Catch ya later, dude!” 

Atsumu slammed the door behind him and slapped a hand over his mouth, trying to stifle his loud, shaking breaths that stumbled off his tongue. The ugly carpeted hallway in front of him swam, and the colours of it bled together. He shut his eyes to block out the incessant way they grabbed for his attention. His soulmate was a  _ boy. _

He knew that, logically he knew that. He knew that his soulmate was a boy, ever since he asked, but his soulmate  _ couldn’t _ be a boy. Atsumu wasn’t a person who had a boy for a soulmate. He couldn’t be. He wasn’t  _ allowed. _ He wasn’t allowed to have a boy with dark hair that curled past his earlobe when he tucked it behind his ear. He wasn’t allowed to have a boy who looked at him as if he were undressing him, memorizing the planes of his body. A boy who stared as if he were committing each new expression to heart. Atsumu was not allowed to have a soulmate who was a boy, who made him feel like he was whole, because to love was to yearn and if his heart wasn’t breaking then that wasn’t love. 

Sakusa was not love. Not his, not for him, so Atsumu swallowed the knot in his throat and stood, pushing away the guilt that lingered at the back of his mind. Guilt because he had already squeezed Sakusa into the corners of his small sketchbook, lips and hands and hair, amongst  _ Kita-san _ and  _ Aran-kun _ . Now all he wanted to do was to burn the whole thing, and he flagged the thought for later before deciding that he’d slip into the role of  _ asshole _ once again. 

He returned to the dorm ten minutes before his next class, palm scrubbed clean and stomach growling, only just realising he never ate anything. He pushed the door open and blinked at Sakusa who was on the tiled floor of the kitchenette, staring up at his hand. 

“Omi-kun?” 

Sakusa tilted his head back to look at Atsumu and he sighed, dragging his hand across his face before sitting up. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “Did you eat breakfast?” 

Atsumu’s mouth shaped a  _ no _ , but he thought better of it. “I hafta be in class already, can’t talk.” He bit the inside of his cheek and shut himself in the bathroom, letting hot water run over his hands and warm his face. He changed, fixed his hair, and was out of the dorm in eight minutes, all while avoiding Sakusa’s worried gaze. 

Sakusa’s worried gaze that made Atsumu feel sick because it reminded him that he was weird, that he was a boy who liked a boy, and who had a boy for a soulmate, and couldn’t dream of having anyone else. 

And being an asshole was easy, but avoiding a roommate was decidedly not. Atsumu shuffled back into their dorm at 11pm, tiredness seeping into his skin. Osamu had texted him after lunch–  _ dating suna now. just letting u know– _ as if it wasn’t the single most conflicting sentence he could say. 

Wrapped up in the humid, dark cloud of his thoughts, he didn’t notice Sakusa perched on a barstool they set up near the counter, whose gaze shifted from the laptop screen to him instead. “Where were you?” he asked, question piercing through the haze. The worry in his tone made Atsumu want to  _ run _ . He couldn’t save the both of them when everything Sakusa did made the butterflies in him melt into a gooey pool at the bottom of his gut. 

“Just out with my friend, Omi,” he replied, shucking off his shoes. Lying through his teeth was a skill and he fully intended to make use of it. “Honestly I think she’s into me, it's pretty easy to tell with girls and how they lean into ya. It’s cute.” 

“Okay,” Sakusa said carefully. “I was worried.”

Atsumu glanced up at him briefly and the little thing of his heart was split open. Sakusa’s mouth opened to say something more but as if guilty, he shut it. The hands that were poised over his keyboard were clenched lightly and Atsumu could feel doubt radiating off of him in waves. Sakusa was his  _ soulmate _ , his soulmate who was a boy, who was sitting ten feet away from him and looked as if he was caving in on himself.

“That’s stupid. I’m fine.”

Atsumu was almost at the door to their bedroom, but Sakusa was already behind him, a hand wrapped around his wrist to keep him still. “Miya, what’s wrong? I’ve known you for almost three weeks now and I can tell something’s off. Tell me.”

Sakusa was looking at him with fire and stone and earth in the thin ring of his iris. Twin lakes of genuine concern that Atsumu felt he was drowning in.

“Atsumu.” 

Firm. Soft. Every dying supernova condensed into the quiet utterance of his name. Every syllable of longing that was holding itself back. Atsumu’s already weak resolve crumbled further under the heat of Sakusa’s eyes. He took a pen from his pocket and moved their hands so that their wrists were exposed, andpressed the tip of his pen to his skin, drawing a hesitant heart. The image was mirrored on Sakusa’s, and Atsumu could hear the audible inhale, followed by a shaky,  _ “Holy shit.” _

Slowly raising his eyes from their wrists, Atsumu was met with the disarming illumination of the moonlight on Sakusa’s face. “I found out this morning,” Atsumu said hoarsely. 

Sakusa still hadn’t let go of his wrist, and Atsumu’s heart was stuck between the back of his throat and his tongue. Any longer and his entire body would combust, the heat of where they touched made all the more tempting by how little space there was between them. 

“Is…” Sakusa trailed off. He gently dropped Atsumu’s wrist to instead wring his own fingers together. “Is this a good time to say that I think I like you?” he asked, every word drenched with nervous anticipation. 

The lingering warmth of Sakusa’s hand was still burning on Atsumu’s skin, and he refrained from pressing his fingers to it. “Hah, I’d hope ya like me, considerin’ yer stuck with me now,” he teased. “And I’m uh...sorry for avoiding you. I didn’t know what to do when I realised that you were a boy who...who liked me back.” He paused and aiming for humor, he added, “It’s always the fuckers with internalised homophobia, isn’t it.”

“Sorry you have to deal with that,” Sakusa said. “It’s hard to separate yourself from what you’ve grown up with, and you deserve better.” 

Atsumu smiled, brushing a finger along Sakusa’s, an unspoken request for permission to touch. Sakusa opened his hand and Atsumu curled his pinkie around his. “I think I really like ya too, Omi-kun. Even yer stupid long lashes, and yer inability to remember which bed is yours.”

Their faces were mere inches apart now, and Atsumu struggled to keep eye contact with Sakusa, so when his gaze dropped to his lips, formed into a pout, he couldn’t help but let out a soft giggle. “Can I kiss you?” he whispered, as if the destruction of the invisible borders between them even mattered. 

Sakusa flushed and murmured, “Are you sure you want to kiss me?”

His question was hesitant but Atsumu didn’t miss the slight tilt of his head, or the eyes burning into his own lips. “Yeah, yes, definitely,” he said, now clutching at Sakusa’s hands. “Don’t ask, you’ll make me second guess myself, plus I’ve thought about yer lips for too fuckin’ long the past few weeks for me to not want to kiss you now.”

Sakusa let out a laugh, the corners of his eyes crinkling. It made Atsumu grip his hand tighter, as if that would slow the rapid beat of his heart. “Okay,” Sakusa said softly, resting his forehead on Atsumu’s. “Okay, you can kiss me.”

And when Atsumu cocked his head to the side, slotting his lips against Sakusa’s, it felt like heaven and earth had collided. Stars spinning and locking into constellations that spoke of mundane stories. Gravity pulled everything, everything into Sakusa. His lips, his hands, the small hitch in his breath that asked for the oxygen in his lungs to be drawn out. Sakusa’s hands came up to cup Atsumu’s face and, in that moment, Atsumu knew nothing other than love. 

Because nothing else was worth remembering more than the stupid, inconceivable depth of the universe that held him in its hands. 

**Author's Note:**

> aye so thank u to my betas anqi vinnie skai and luna i appreciate u all sm


End file.
